Deep inside my Soul.......Somewhere deep inside my soul there is a starving artist..... (an unemployed one) HA!  Seriously though, there seems to be nothing artistic that does not touch me.  I am not sure what it is or where I get it from.  I don't see it the way it is in me in any of my family.  It seems it was just randomly dropped into my soul for reasons unknown.

There is just nothing that seems to keep my attention like art.  Walking through a museum....gosh I could spend all day.  Occasionally I just see something that I cannot take my eyes off.  It just speaks to me.  While in NY in 08' I went to see All My Sons by Arthur Miller on Broadway.  It was filled with top names; Katie Holmes, John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Patrick Wilson and so on but when I sat in my seat and started taking in this amazing story I didn't seem to pay any attention to who the actors were.  I was so enthralled by the story itself.  I didn't pay attention to the people sitting next to me or behind me and I am sure some carried on their own conversations but I didn't even notice.  It was wonderful.  When it ended I was sad, I didn't want it to be over.

Music is different for me as well.  I mean I listen to just about anything and everything!  Old, new, well known, not so well known.  I find myself listening to it more when it has a real story or I can put a real meaning to it.  For example Her Diamonds by Rob Thomas, I enjoyed the song the first time I heard it and was immediately interested in what it was about.  Once I discovered that it was about his wife's battle with an auto immune disease it mattered to me more.  I don't hear music I actually listen to it.  There is a difference.  I mean if the music is playing and I am doing things around the house or carrying on a conversation over it that is one thing but then there are just those songs, those that when you hear them come on you just have to stop what you are doing and listen.  You have to take them in without distraction.  Jeff Buckley, Hallelujah, when I hear the music start to play I just have to stop and listen.  Soak it all in.  I can shut my eyes and for a brief moment be somewhere else, somewhere peaceful, serene.  

I can sit and watch someone dance but on occasion you see someone dance that draws you in, you no longer just see the motions and the people in front of you, you feel it.  You soak it up and you feel the emotion in the dance, in the story they are sharing with you.  Lyrical, contemporary more often than not just really pulls you in.  It will make the hair on your arms stand up and a chill comes over you.  It is just uncontrollable, when it happens it just happens, you can't make it happen.

Everyone knows I am a movie junkie.  Old, new, silly, dramatic, action, thriller and on and on.  I am not a fan of reading sub titles but I have been known to watch movies with them.  If the story is really there, if the characters are really there, you don't need to know the words.  You know the story just from watching it.  It is almost as if I manage to block out the words and it does not even bother me that I can't understand a single word they are saying.  When you can do that, when you can get the gist, understand the story without all that added stuff, that is a good performance.  That is worth watching.

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, 
it moves again since it is life." 

~William Faulkner